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Six weeks past corona. The day before my induction, I took a covid test. My husband and I took turns; one of us walking with our son in Central Park, while the other got swabbed in a basement lab. Hours later, I checked the results. I was negative. I breathed a sigh of relief. As I sat typing notes to my colleagues before I started maternity leave, my phone rang. It was my doctor, I had tested positive. My heart sank. I had read the results incorrectly. My husband had tested negative. How did this happen? I didn’t leave the house save for two doctor’s appointments. My covid symptoms ended weeks ago.  Had I used hand sanitizer after touching the Lyft door? What about the Lyft home? Had I sanitized after touching the door to the facility? It didn’t matter.

I didn’t realize it at the time but this would mean doctors and nurses had to take extreme precautions around me - more PPE, extra gowns, and a general avoidance of my room. As soon as the baby was delivered, compassion dissipated. I was without a partner or advocate and my covid positive status meant I was ignored, dismissed, othered. It was eye opening. And devastating.

I was advised by the nurses to not touch my baby, not to snuggle him. I could nurse him, but that was it. He slept in a plastic box for 2 nights. But I was told keep my mask on because I was a threat. Imagine starting that way. Alone, without being able to cradle the very person you just brought into this world, and literally being stuck in a room without friends or family, after having given birth on your own. Alone and scared. It was no way to begin.

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School, closed.
Our little boy cries. Confused. Scared.
We walk hesitantly to the park.
By the cherry blossom path in Central Park, I stop and lean against the stroller; my back is aching.
Must be my pregnant belly.

The pain persists.
Exhaustion. I can barely walk.
My son wants to be held. I pick him up; and the coughing starts.
It hurts to sleep. It must be the third trimester.
It must be the flu.
Maybe it’s dehydration.
Drink the pedialyte. Stop going on walks.

I can hardly keep my eyes open. I finally ask for a day off. I can’t hold the laptop. Sleep. sleep. sleep. Why am I so tired.

The pizza, terrible. My husband must have had an off night.
Wait. I can’t smell.

What? Are you sure, doctor?
It’s not on the symptoms list. They say it’s a cough, it’s a fever.

Corona.

Corona.

This can't be.

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Me just minutes before giving birth.

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It’s unclear when I will see any of my family out of state which includes my dear brother and sister in law, my uncle and aunt in London, my cousins in California, Utah, and Tennessee. I come from a large family and we try to gather each year around the winter holidays. Time to eat, laugh, reminisce. As our parents age, these gatherings have more significance. As new spouses are added to the family, dogs are adopted, and babies are born, these gatherings have more significance. Our family is growing and changing, and yet what endures is the easiness of being together, of eating entirely too much, of celebrating absolutely nothing. Now we are stuck. Fearful of seeing one another, of getting on a plane, of attending large gatherings. We don’t know when we’ll see the people we cherish. I don’t feel free. I feel trapped, limited, weighted. I long for lighter days.

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My son was just a few months old when we began hearing about separations at the border. I remember cradling him, his soft skin, that sweet smell, thinking about how vulnerable and small he was. And then thinking, sick to my stomach that this administration was taking babies, that desperately need their parents, away and locking them in detention centers. The cruelty of people to take children from their parents and lie to our faces about it. It’s sick and twisted. I can’t imagine a mother or father who had to lose their children, their infants, their innocent babies. I can’t help but wonder, what parent could read these horrific stories, be able to hold their own children, and still insist that it’s just the law? Where is our compassion? Our empathy? Our care for other human beings in need? In this country we have gotten too good at detachment -we flee from the absurdity, the cruelty, the shock. We no longer blink at the othering and dehumanizing of people. Out of sight, out of mind. This administration has normalized and perpetuated cruelty.

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Do you all remember early 2017? I do. I was finishing my dissertation. I was hooked to the news. I was terrified. I obsessively called, and called, and called my senators, other people’s senators. I would speak to ambivalent and bemused staffers, I would record, and re-record messages on the answering machines. I called to stop the horrific cabinet appointments, to protest the Muslim ban, to ask for sanity in the face of evil.  I called everyday hoping it would move someone, anyone. It didn’t feel like our voices mattered. The helplessness I felt then continues today. 

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Amma? Why are you snuggling the baby? That was day 2. It's been five months. Life with two young children, no childcare, and a full time job has been exhausting. I have - as someone recently wrote - a constant silent scream forming in the back of my mind. Why, why, why is life this way? I want to focus on my children, I want to not be constantly anxious, I want to do my job well. I also want to keep safe and away from a virus that I’ve had and suffered through. I want to keep my babies safe. Why are these choices I have to make? Parenting is hard enough, working full time and teaching is hard enough. Add to that, no childcare or substantive support, the fear of illness if you venture beyond the safehaven of your home, it’s too much. We are all hanging on by a thread.

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I’m tired. I’m so tired of worrying about everything. About my work, about my children, about whether going to Wegman’s to get groceries will introduce disease into our house, about whether the president will start nuclear war, cage more children, or incite more violence such that more white supremacists will feel emboldened. I’ve been tired for five years. Five years of hate, division, incompetence, cruelty, chaos. No more. I can’t do this anymore.

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The first weekend in March we planned to have a small birthday brunch for our son’s second birthday. In the days before we were unsure if we should even have my parents risk the train ride from New Jersey to New York City, afraid that the coronavirus could be contracted, especially given they were in the target demographic. My father was so intent on celebrating he went and got a late flu shot. So, we had a long brunch, opened some gifts, watched as our son joyfully jumped on the sofa with his older cousin, screaming with delight about his gifts. We sang happy birthday with candles ablaze on cupcakes I had made from scratch the night before.My son was full of joy as he blew out the candles. I’m so aware of that weekend because it was the second to last of ‘life’ as we knew it. I also know it because it was those memories- of his birthday cake and his gifts - captured via shaky iPhone footage, that my son watched and re-watched as the days home from school turned into weeks, and then months.

Trapped inside for most of the day, my son cried, as he had never done. Confused as to why his two-year old classmates were mere squares on the screen. As the weeks wore on, he grew tired of the performance. Wishing he was with them and not understanding why he couldn’t be. His teachers, trying their best to adapt to teaching Montessori style learning over a computer.

Childhoods interrupted. My son’s and everyone else’s. We had a rhythm to life. Each morning we walked to school observing nearby construction projects, the neighbors, and our busy city street. After school we would play in the nearby playground meeting up with his classmates, and then stop for the occasional TJ’s trip. Weekends were full of adventures in Central Park, trips to city museums, and jumping on buses and subways, which delighted him to no end.

But for no reason - for no good reason - the ’greatest country on earth’ with an administration that claimed they would ‘make America great again’ just didn’t bother. Full of filthy rich people who also unsurprisingly assumed that the average American could survive on one stimulus check of $1200, they knew their lives wouldn’t be upended. They would have access to the finest treatments, doctors, and resources. Their children wouldn’t feel the walls closing in.

So instead my son, my nieces, and nephews, and children all over the country were forced to go home, to leave their classmates and teachers, separate from their friends, and close family, and live in bubbles. Childhoods interrupted. We won’t know the full impact of it for a long time - the full impact of the fear of an unknown that we can’t see but upended their lives; forced them into isolation; and required us to don a mask indefinitely.

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As I left my house after my water broke just before 4 in the morning, I was terrified. It was the eve of my second attempt at an induction because I cancelled the first: I wanted the baby to come naturally. A week later, I got my wish. I went into labor just 8 hours before I was meant to check myself into the hospital.

My labor progressed quickly, I was convinced I wouldn’t make it to the hospital. The contractions were so close together and so painful; a jackhammer in my back.  My husband looked at me calmly, grabbed my hospital bag, contacted a Lyft, and watched me take the elevator, alone. He couldn’t leave our house because our two-year old son was fast asleep in the bedroom. In normal times, we would have a family member staying with us or on call, but these were not normal times. No. We were in a pandemic and we were at the epicenter in New York City.

So alone I rode at 3:45am, the Lyft driver trying to distract me by asking me questions. The details of a mad dash to the delivery room are for another story. But there I was waiting for my husband to arrive, looking at his text in my palm, ‘do whatever you think is right.’ Minutes later, the doctor told me the baby was ready to come, and out in the world he came.

I gave birth in a mask, alone.

It didn’t have to be this way. If there had been a responsible competent response from the federal government the virus wouldn’t have spread like wildfire. They had weeks and weeks of notice and more information than every American. But instead, they kept it to themselves. To keep the stock market from crashing. To keep their election hopes alive.